After 6 years of talking about going back to Dollywood, we finally (over)packed our bags and made the 7 hour trip to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. We left early, we stopped once for gas and once for coffee and made it there by check-in. We watched the landscape of Pennsylvania, with its still-brown trees and rushing creeks, expand into the lazy West Virginian mountains, which then flattened into verdant and beautiful Tennessee.

For me, going back was important. It was meaningful. It was where we used to go to when I lived in Kentucky, in Indiana. I've lost a lot of who I was then, growing up and older. I wanted to remember, to greet the town we spent weekends at when my mother worked nigh shifts and my father stuffed newspapers with coupons to make ends meet.

Each turn, each road, each store was in the grey space of memory and fabrication. I created fake memories, building on what felt familiar in the moment. I became my own unreliable narrator. Nostalgia became a tight rope and I tested the strength of how far I could go back in my mind with each foot step across town. I pushed ahead. Things weren't the same as they were; but I pushed ahead.

And in those moments of reflection and exhaustion, we filled the hours with new memories. Miniature golf while waiting for our tattoo appointments. We both got something done right before midnight: Nolan two hands and myself a fox and three rabbits. We ate large portions of dinner and dessert and walked it all off the next day. We rode the water rides two or three times and shared fries in the warm valley sun. We held hands, we shook the Ferris wheel cart. We bought postcards we forgot to send out.

We drove home on Easter, stopped for dinner, got our dogs and it all happened so fast, getting back into the routine of this new life in our new house.

So two amazing things happened last week: we went to Dollywood and I got Kale and Caramel's (Lily) new book, The Kale and Caramel Cookbook! In my package was a little jar of rose and cocoa nib sprinkles. While we were walking around the amusement park, we came across a frozen banana stand. Well, I really wanted to celebrate both of these things--so I married them together into one easy treat!

Directions: Cut 4 bananas in the middle on a diagonal. Pierce each with a skewer or popsicle stick. Place onto a parchment-lined half sheet. Freeze for 15 minutes. Melt 12 ounces of dark chocolate in a small bowl, either in the microwave or in a double boiler. Remove bananas from freezer and dip into melted chocolate. Sprinkle with rose and cocoa nib sprinkles from Kale and Caramel. Freeze for another hour before you can enjoy!

We finally started to clean out the last room of our house. It's a mess right now, but it's slowly getting there. We went to Target and looked at night lights and zoo animals--for Lana or some other toddler who will run around our feet.

We found all these old documents from California. Pictures and letters and little trinkets we through in a box and called it a memory. I told Nolan it's hard to look at those things, to think that we were so different just a year ago and how we have a farm in the Ligonier Valley now. How we just ate to pass the hours and fought to fill the gaps between work and sleep. We were different then; but it makes me nervous to look at those relics and think maybe we were exactly the same.

I remember the second meal we had in California, in the northernmost part of San Diego county where we were living at the time. It was just Starbucks, nothing fancy. But it was hot out and we never got the hang of just relaxing back then, so we went for somewhere with air conditioning. I got an iced coffee and a turnover. We kept calling it a turn-up and couldn't tell why it didn't sound quite right.

I paid $4 for a pastry I could have made at home. But now, now I am different. I make things myself. I save money where I can. I do it myself and make it at home. I don't want to run away to other places as much anymore.

Cherry Lemon Poppyseed Turnovers!

Ingredients:

2 sheets puff pastry (10" x 10"

8 oz cherry pie filling

1 vanilla bean, scraped (or sub 1 TB pure vanilla extract)

Zest of 2 lemons, separated

Juice of 2 lemons, separated

1/2 cup white sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 TB melted butter

1 TB heavy cream

2 cup confectioners sugar

1 TB poppyseeds

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400*F and prepare 2 half sheets with parchment paper

Cut puff pastry into 8 equal squares (4 per sheet at 2.5")

Mix cherry pie filling, zest, vanilla, juice of one lemon, white sugar, and salt together and mix with a wooden spoon

Equally arrange your 8 squares on your prepared sheets

Spoon about 2 tablespoons of filling into the center of each square

Brush all edges with butter and turn each pastry on a diagonal

Crimp edges with a fork to seal (obviously, I did not do this step too well as mine opened up...but it was prettier this way!)

Repeat with remaining

Brush all with butter on top as well

Pierce with a fork to vent out a bit of air

Bake for 25 minutes or until golden brown and puffed

Allow to cool. While cooling, mix together remaining lemon juice and zest, cream, and confectioners sugar to create a thin icing

The snow drifts; it has no concept of space-time. The dogs sleep and wake throughout the day, all three of them in huddles and heads propped on the others' backs. They are all paws and tails when we come home, a mix of cries and nerves.

We went to a charity dinner last night, for the ASPCA and Your Safe Haven. We spent the night at my parents' instead of driving home. And I missed it, the place in Ligonier that has a barn and field and where we've slept in the same bed for the last week. It's finally feeling like home, a transition I wasn't sure would happen so quickly.

It's peaceful and quiet and I am left alone most days. I keep the TV off. I read in my spare time. A year ago it wouldn't have been like this. Here, I can forget the world and the past. Here, I have no concept of space-time myself and I can drift off into a sleep or pile up in a thousand blankets and take more moments for living instead of remembering.

Beer-Poached Pear Cobbler

This recipe is warm. It's beer and spiced pears and warm biscuits and cool cream. It's baked in cast iron and lasts for days. It's a variation, a riff from this cake and lovely in its complications and its delicacy.

Ingredients for Beer-Poached Pears:

4 pears, peeled, cored and halved

1/2 cup white sugar

1/4 cup clover honey

1 vanilla bean, split in half

2 cup beer (I used Yuengling)

1 orange, juice and zest

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 cup orange juice

Pinch of salt

2 tablespoon ginger, peeled

1/4 cup AP flour

Ingredients for Biscuits and Cobbler:

1 1/2 cup AP flour

1/2 cup white sugar, extra for sprinkling

2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

6 TB unsalted butter, cold and cubed

3/4 cup buttermilk, cold

1 TB vanilla extract

2 TB candied ginger

Directions for Beer-Poached Pears:

In a medium saucepan, bring all ingredients (except the flour) to a boil

Reduce heat, simmer for 15 minutes or until just tender

Take off heat, remove pears

Put in a small mixing bowl and sprinkle with flour while it cools

Directions for Biscuits and Cobbler:

Preheat oven to 350*F

Prep your cast iron skillet with butter

Whisk together dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl

Using your hands, mix in butter by pinching into your dry ingredients until fat is the size of peas

Create a well in the center of your mixture with a wooden spoon and pour in buttermilk and vanilla extract

Stir until just mixed

Pour pears into pan and drop biscuit dough on top of pears

Sprinkle with a bit of sugar

Bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown

Assemble: Scoop out a pear with a bit of biscuit on top. Whisk together mascarpone or greek yogurt, a bit of honey, and some vanilla to top.

In Italy, I drank a lot of tea. Too embarrassed to order the proper coffee and how many packets of sugar I used; I got mine from vending machines on campus anyway. I would nurse it while craning my neck to look at a fresco, taking notes, doodling in the margins when my teacher would switch to Italian. I did not know Italian. I never thought to learn before moving there.

Italy is a blur now, I remember it in fragments. In some ways, I can't remember much of anything except the cafeteria, the silent nuns who nodded their heads. The liturgical smell of the monastery that was a mix between parchment and antiseptic solution. I remember the art in vague metaphors of form and color. I think I cried seeing the David, but it could have been an eyelash. My contacts were old that day too, I do remember that.

October was a blur. I took trips to Belgium, Ireland, Spain, and Tunisia. I didn't bother to answer my phone when my mother called to wish me a happy birthday. I ended an email to a professor with "Besos". I was not myself, but I was a lot of things. I ate with my hands, standing up, quickly with my head down. I smoked a joint on a statue with two friends and fell asleep in the cab home. I didn't get the hang of it all, but I thought I did.

By November of that year, I started to figure out how to order coffee, the rules and rituals of calling Rome my home. We had a fake Thanksgiving and then Christmas rolled in lazily. Marketplaces and stands selling witches and baubles. I bought nothing but a ticket to the carousel and the icy air turned my cheeks red and dry during finals week.

It's six years ago today since I left for a flight to JFK. The morning before my bus left, I ordered a hot chocolate. Something to keep my hands busy and warm, as impatient as they were back then. The drink was thick, nearly a pudding, its silken warmth coating my throat. It was spiked with an alcohol I never quite tasted again but it hung on my tongue like a whispered prayer.

And this is my approximation, with Reddi-wip and chocolate sprinkles and smooth peanut butter. Made on the stovetop in a saucepan I found at a Texas flea market. It all comes full circle, it just took a few years and a few thousand miles to get there.

Italian-style Hot Chocolate!

Ingredients:

¼ cup cocoa powder

½ cup white sugar

1 cup heavy whipping cream

½ cup almond milk

2 TB cornstarch

2 TB whole milk or water

6 oz milk chocolate, best quality you can afford, chopped

2 TB smooth peanut butter

1 TB pure vanilla extract

½ TB almond liqueur

Whipped cream, marshmallows, and sprinkles, if desire

Directions:

In a saucepan, whisk together cocoa, sugar, cream, and milk

Heat on medium until sugar is dissolved, but making sure to stir frequently so the cocoa doesn’t clump

While the saucepan is heating, in a small bowl, mix together cornstarch and milk to create a slurry

Next, heat your cream mixture until bubbles form around the rim, then immediately take off heat and stir in your slurry, chocolate, peanut butter

Continue to stir with a wooden spoon or spatula until everything is well-mixed

Finally, stir in extract and liqueur

Now, if you feel your chocolate was a bit clumpy, you didn’t stir enough, or your slurry did not fully incorporate into your mixture, I recommend running your entire mixture through a sieve to make it extra silken

It's been hovering in the teens all week and I cannot stop myself from sleeping in a little longer than I usually do. The dogs are allowed out for ten minutes at a time; I worry about colds and infection. They roam the fence and bark at a brown rabbit that has been in our back yard for a week. I worry the ground is too frozen for a burrow. I wonder how he got so lost.

And in the fog of steam from my coffee and steam from my breath, I bake to remember the fog of my childhood. Baked apples and Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Oatmeal cookies and sweetened rice with milk. It's winters like these, the kinds that are quick and silent as a dagger, that make me glad I'm back in Pennsylvania.

I'll wait out this Polar Vortex from the comfort of my kitchen, the yellow light of the oven glowing in the palest shade of orange I have ever seen.

Apple Tart with Oatmeal Crust

I used a 14" tart pan for this recipe and I do recommend you doing the same, both for presentation and ease. I adapted my crust from this one and found it super simple and delicious, bringing me back to cinnamon oatmeal Quaker packets along the way. Feel free to try any other type of fruit for this tart, though I am particularly partial to apple.

Ingredients for Oatmeal Crust:

3/4 cup quick cooking oats

1/2 cup AP flour

1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed

6 TB butter, cold and cut into cubes

Pinch of salt

1-2 TB ice water

Directions for Oatmeal Crust:

Prepare your pan and preheat oven to 350*F

In a food processor, combine all ingredients except the water

Pulse until fat is pea-sized

Turn motor on and add ice water until a dough just barely forms from the liquid

With floured hands, press crust into your tart pan

Bake for 12 minutes

Turn oven up to 400*F

Ingredients for Filling:

6 TB light corn syrup

2 TB molasses

1 egg + 1 yolk

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 TB cinnamon

2 TB butter, melted

Directions for Filling:

Whisk all ingredients

Pour over par-baked oatmeal crust

Assembly and Final Directions: Thinly slice two apples and top your tart filling with these. Add a squeeze of orange juice or rum for a spike and sprinkle with a tiny bit of sea salt and a little more cinnamon. Bake for an additional 15 minutes or until filling is set. To prevent your crust burning, you may want to use a bit of aluminum on the edges.

Allow to cool slightly before releasing from the pan and serve warm or cold with confecioner's sugar and ice cream.